In multiple letters to The Record, the 47-year-old killer now on death row asked for information about a woman savagely beaten and left in the orchard east of Highway 99 north of Hammer Lane.

Shermantine said he held intimate details that nobody but detectives would know, including that the victim had been beaten with a steel pipe.

She had paint in her nose, he said, from huffing spray paint out of a paper bag and then inhaling the fumes for an intoxicating high. Shermantine called her a "paint huffer," but he didn't know her name.

He blamed the killing on his late partner, Loren Herzog, as he had done with all the victims.

"We had lost count because all the killings just started to blend together," Shermantine wrote May 18, 2012. "I truthfully don't believe (we) will know the total count."

Shermantine and Herzog led a killing spree believed to span 15 years until their arrests in 1999. Investigators following Shermantine's tips last year recovered five buried victims in San Joaquin and Calaveras counties.

Some were left where they died, like Monts de Oca, and others were buried in old, rural wells.

Their first victim previously known by authorities was Henry Howell, killed two weeks later in Hope Valley in Alpine County. Shermantine was convicted of his murder, along with three others.

Herzog was convicted in three murders and sentenced to 78 years to life, but his case was overturned on appeal. Herzog last year committed suicide while on parole in Lassen County.

If Shermantine's statements about Monts de Oca prove true, this may be their first victim, killed just a couple of months after he and Herzog graduated from Linden High School.

Officials won't confirm or deny Shermantine's statements, but bounty hunter Rob Dick said he is a believer. Dick has tracked down the killers' victims and immersed himself in the case for the past 14 years.

Dick reviewed four letters Shermantine sent to The Record and said the details lead him to believe the killer is pointing directly to Monts de Oca. It was telling when Shermantine notes the paint and steel pipe, Dick said.

"For Wes to blurt that out, there's no way he would have known that," Dick said. "It's the earliest one we know of with 100 percent certainty."

Those details were not published in news stories about the woman's death.

To know for certain, one would have to review the case file, such as the autopsy report to confirm if paint was on her face and if it were possible that she died from a steel pipe, Dick said.

Deputy Les Garcia of San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said he would not confirm or deny such a conclusion based on statements Shermantine gave to the media.

As far as Garcia is concerned, the case remains unsolved assigned to a cold case investigator.

Chief Deputy County Counsel Kristen Hegge this month declined The Record's public records request seeking to review the autopsy report on the same grounds.

"Although it has been a long time since the body was discovered, the Sheriff's office maintains an open file and release of the requested documents would compromise the investigation," Hegge wrote.

State Sen. Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton said she also believes Shermantine. The killer has talked about Monts de Oca to her in letters and their many visits at San Quentin State Prison, Galgiani said.

She believes that Shermantine has more valuable information to give, but further searches have come to a halt. The FBI ran the most recent search, digging up a 100-foot-deep well in Linden, only to find nothing.

Federal agents at the dig's conclusion said that they would search again for unrecovered homicide victims, if they believed Shermantine had specific information to impart.

Galgiani said for Shermantine to offer up the Monts de Oca case is yet another example of him being truthful. She would like FBI agents to resume searching. If they don't act, she is ready to move.

Galgiani has a task force of local law enforcement agencies outside of San Joaquin County still in talks about clues Shermantine is providing regarding their own missing persons cases.

"Until the FBI attempts the recovery effort at the locations that he identified, it still is a guessing game," she said. "It still leaves a tremendous amount of doubt in the minds of all the family members who have watched this so closely."

Multiple attempts by The Record to contact relatives of Monts de Oca who knew her were unsuccessful. She would be 54 years old today.